Editing IDEF (section)

{{Short description|Family of modeling languages}}
{{For|the defense fair|International Defence Industry Fair}}

[[Image:IDEF Methods.svg|thumb|320px|IDEF methods: part of the systems engineer's toolbox]]

'''IDEF''', initially an abbreviation of '''ICAM Definition''' and renamed in 1999 as '''Integration Definition''', is a family of modeling languages in the field of systems and software engineering. They cover a wide range of uses from functional modeling to data, simulation, [[object-oriented analysis and design]], and knowledge acquisition. These definition languages were developed under funding from U.S. Air Force and, although still most commonly used by them and other military and United States Department of Defense (DoD) agencies, are in the public domain.

The most-widely recognized and used components of the IDEF family are IDEF0, a functional modeling language building on SADT, and IDEF1X, which addresses information models and database design issues.